Slightly French

It begins like Detlef Sierck's "das Hofkonzert.";in both movies ,the star is no longer available and they need a replacement ;music and dance make almost 50% of the movie in both although the German one was operetta .There the comparison ends.

It's a carnival dancer ,a would be folies bergères ex-artist who will play the part ; then the script turns Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" : her manners are not adequate , her grammar is worse ,so he asks a teacher to use phonetics to make a duchess out of the Flower Girl. Dancing ,singing and glamour are no problem for Miss Lamour , who even tries to live up to her so called reputation by learning a little bit of French (one can hear her utter "n'est-ce pas? " (in French,there's no problem with don't it ?and doesn't it ?,for it translates everything) ,"bonjour monsieur" ;hence the title .

But wouldn't Mary O'Leary lose her whole identity in the process when she became Rochelle Olivia ? And eventually won't his creator(Don amèche) be caught out at his own game ?

As it often happens in Douglas Sirk's imitation of life, reality and performances (the row between the director and his star) are difficult to distinguish;in his book , "exquisite ironies and magnificent obsessions ", Tom Ryan points out that his happy endings are often ironical and double-entendre.

SLIGHTLY FRENCH is a delightful little trifle starring Dorothy Lamour as a cynical carnival performer who is wooed by movie director Don Ameche to star in his new movie and feign being a great French star imported to America for the film. (Interestingly, this very plot was used that same year in IT'S A GREAT FEELING with Doris Day - and Day's Faux French femme's last name was Lamour!!!). Elegantly filmed by cultish director Douglas Sirk, SLIGHTLY FRENCH is not a classic but it's a very appealing little comedy/musical/drama with two excellent stars. Cannot believe one reviewer on IMDb wrote Lamour "never became a movie star" away from Hope and Crosby, she was only one of the biggest stars 1936-1949 in pictures and in 1941 was VARIETY magazine's top female box-office attraction. She starred in many excellent films sans Bob or Bing, THE HURRICANE, THE FLEET'S IN, JOHNNY APOLLO, SPAWN OF THE NORTH, etc. You'll note she gets billing over Ameche in this film. Alas, few of the big movie stars of the era have had their careers locked away in the vaults as Dorothy has - most of her films were at Paramount, and Universal (which now owns the 1930-1948 Paramount films) has done a very poor job getting most of them in circulation so most do only know her today from the Road movies. She was a great singer, a delightful screen star, and a fairly good actress too. Here's hoping this Columbia release will show up on Turner Classic Movies soon so more can see this lovely glamour girl in this underrated gem.

Bad movie made only for the lead star's fans.This is the first movie of Lamour where I get a good look at what kind of acting ability Lamour has.One will see it is quite limited but she is really a great salesman.She just hypnotises us with charm and beauty.One can also see she was a born entertainer indeed.If one likes her syle,this movie will truly delight her fans.just to see Lamour have fun with this formula romance/musical/comedy once more!I for one love this stuff.I rate Lamour as the third top sexy star of the 1940's behind Marilyn Monroe (mostly a model at that time) and Hedy Lamarr.....

Don Ameche seemed to get typecast as a lying flop in his movies, whether it was as an unsuccessful success coach who lies to his pupil in The Magnificent Dope, a newspaper man who has to rent a wife to impress his family oriented boss in Guest Wife, or a press agent who passes a carnival dancer off as a French actress so he doesn't lose his job at the studio in Slightly French. Maybe he owes it all to playing Stephen Foster, who was notoriously unsuccessful until his death.

You can find some laughs in this movie, especially if you're a Dorothy Lamour fan. Adele Jergens has a small part in the beginning as a French diva who walks off the set in the middle of a big production number. Desperate to replace her with another French actress, director Willard Parker and press agent Don Ameche go on a hunt. Don finds the versatile Dorothy working different jobs at a carnival and pulls a "Henry Higgins" by giving her a crash course in French high society.

For me, the movie became pretty irritating after a while. Dorothy gets a crush on Don while he's Eliza Doolittle-ing her, but you don't really understand why since he's always yelling at her and criticizing her. Instead of letting him know how much he's hurt her feelings, she yells right back. With the constant bickering and dysfunctional relationship, it gives you very little to root for.

Don Ameche was on the decline in his career and Dorothy Lamour still trying to acheive stardom outside those "Road" movies when this movie was made. It tries to borrow from Ameche's earlier hits with Alice Faye but the formula does not work here because Lamour is no Faye. And she is expected to carry it. Supporting performances from Page and Kennard is good but not enough. If it were made today, it would make a good video rental.